


who made you what you are

by alderations



Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [31]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Immortality, Injury, M/M, Mechanization, Mechtober, Medical Procedures, Surgery, Temporary Character Death, Whumptober 2020, not really shippy either tbh, this is like the polar opposite of a meet-cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27321118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alderations/pseuds/alderations
Summary: “We have the supplies,” says Jonny, gesturing frantically around the lab. “Those eyes that the Doc was working on, for Brian? Those should work, right? We can do something.”(Whumptober Day 31: experiment/left for dead; Mechtober Day 28-31: mechanization)
Relationships: Drumbot Brian/Jonny d'Ville/Gunpowder Tim
Series: Whumptober/Mechtober 2020 [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950916
Comments: 13
Kudos: 85
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	who made you what you are

“We have the supplies,” says Jonny, gesturing frantically around the lab. “Those eyes that the Doc was working on, for Brian? Those should work, right? We can do  _ something.” _

“Would we know  _ how?”  _ Brian asks.

Jonny’s hands flail as he struggles to put words to his emotions. “We—we can figure it out! We have her notes. I was her assistant for Nastya’s mechanization, too. I know it’s been a while, but I remember  _ enough,  _ and there’s no way—we can’t just let him  _ die.” _

“You Did Just Let His Friend Die,” the Toy Soldier points out.

Eyes blazing, Jonny turns on it. “That was different. We weren’t on the ship, and he hadn’t—things have  _ changed,  _ okay?”

It’s been three years since Brian’s seen hide nor hair of Jonny, and while that’s not very long in the grand scheme of their lives, Brian has missed him. He won’t admit as much  _ to  _ Jonny, but he has. And now he’s back, with the Toy Soldier a bit more rigid and scorched around the edges, and this man lying mostly-dead on the floor of Doctor Carmilla’s old lab. They’d dragged him here from the life pod that Aurora plucked out of space, between the floating chunks of moon that made the ship shudder and hum with discomfort. As Brian studies the hollowed-out remains of the man’s eyes, he wonders what could possibly have changed in Jonny’s mind to make him desperate to save—to  _ mechanize— _ some mortal.

He will admit that, despite the gore and moon dust matted into the man’s curls, he is beautiful. Probably even more so when he has an intact face.

Ivy is already rifling through old filing cabinets and desk drawers in search of any useful notes, while Nastya scrutinizes Jonny’s agitated face. “What’s so special about this guy? We said—after the doctor left, we said there wouldn’t be any more of us. In case you’ve forgotten.”

“He’s a regicidal maniac,” Jonny deadpans. “I think you’d be quite fond of him, actually.”

“Bold assumptions,” Nastya huffs, though she does give the man on the floor an appraising squint. “And, what, you’re not just going to write a song about him and let him die?”

Ashes speaks up from behind her, where they’ve been watching the scene unfold with a cigar hanging from their lips. “Fucker spent three days in a life pod, dying of sepsis from a rifle wound, with  _ no goddamn face,  _ and he’s still kicking. Somewhat. I say he deserves another shot.”

Once they’ve made up their mind, Ashes is hard to sway, and the rest of the crew is loath to pit themselves against them. Brian frowns down at the man on the floor again, then locks eyes with Nastya, studying what emotions he can find in her face. “You really want to subject him to all of… this?” Brian asks Jonny.

“It’s not like he’s a good person or anything,” Jonny grumbles. “He deserves—well, I don’t give a shit what he deserves. I don’t want him to die.”

Brian remembers how Jonny had stormed around the ship, screaming and lashing out, after Brian had first been mechanized. How he berated Carmilla about making  _ another one, really? You can never have enough, can you? _ He doesn’t understand what’s changed, and he can’t ignore the pang in his heart at the feeling that this half-dead man is somehow better, more worthy, than he’ll ever be.

But that’s his problem to analyze, not Jonny’s. “What’s his name?”

“Tim,” Jonny says. His voice cracks. “Gunpowder. Tim is his last name, I think? I don’t know, he’s fucking weird.”

At that moment, Ivy returns with an embossed golden box in one hand, and a handful of manila folders in the other. “I found the eyes,” she informs them.

She and Nastya take over. They don’t bother moving Tim up to one of the exam tables, since they’d have to move too many of Carmilla’s miscellaneous research supplies and, at this point, he might not survive another move. Though Brian knows more about the mechanization process than he cares to admit, he’s more of a medical doctor than a biomechanical one, and he’s more concerned about the way Jonny’s face contorts every time Nastya reaches a finger into Tim’s eye socket.

“Jonny,” Brian murmurs, elbowing him in the side. “You alright?”

The first mate stares down at his blood-encrusted nails. “I’ve been embroiled in fucking  _ trench warfare  _ for three years, and now I’m willingly sentencing a man who—I’m—we’re condemning a man to immortality. I am decidedly not alright.”

Maybe it was a stupid question, Brian figures, but he wraps an arm around Jonny’s shoulders anyway and squeezes him close. “War’s over, at least. Everything ends.”

“I certainly hope so.”

Just then, Ivy hits something with the drill in her hand that makes a horrendous noise, and Tim starts writhing and moaning. “This is not going to go well if he won’t lie still,” Nastya warns, holding his shoulders down with bloody hands. “Could one of you be  _ helpful  _ for once?”

Brian sinks to his knees, then steadies Tim with a hand on each side of his head so that Ivy can keep the drill straight. She appears to be widening the orbital fissures so that the wires dangling from the backs of the mechanical eyes can fit through them, clunky as they are. While she makes minute adjustments to Tim’s bones, Brian brushes the filthy hair from the man’s forehead and wonders, distantly, what his eyes looked like before they were burned out.

They’re enormously lucky that the eyes were ready to go, because there’s no way they could’ve built an entire mechanism from scratch, even with all their combined knowledge. As it is, it only takes a few minutes for Ivy to locate the cauterized stumps of Tim’s optic nerves, and with Nastya’s help, she connects them to the mechanical eyes. “The nanobots should start doing their work now,” Nastya announces. “So that’ll keep him alive. At least.”

Everyone in the room knows what’s coming, but none of them are ready for the moment the mechanism takes over. Tim’s body convulses as if electrocuted, and then he goes limp for the few moments of death that he’ll be allowed before he’s resigned to immortality. When he comes back, gasping and screaming, Ivy and Nastya can barely hold him down.

“Let me,” says Brian, gingerly picking up Tim’s head and resting it in his lap. This way, he can keep him steady, at the very least. The metal eyes staring up at him see nothing, but then Tim’s hand flies up to grasp Brian’s wrist, and he feels something in his chest spasm.

Apparently satisfied with Brian’s stabilization efforts, Nastya sets back to work. By now, Jonny is on his knees on Tim’s other side, watching with uncharacteristic patience. It’s harder for Brian to ignore the gruesome reality of amateur surgery when it’s happening in his lap, so he lets himself drift through the cold expanse of stars in his mind, while Ivy and Ashes work pieces of scrap metal into the proper shapes and pass them off to Nastya to reconstruct some semblance of eye sockets. They’re not pretty. Given the mercurial nature of their mechanisms, they’ll probably  _ never  _ be pretty. But Tim is starting to mumble things that sound more and more like words, and if he wakes up fully while they’re still building his face, it won’t go well.

His mechanism starts to catch up to their work just as Nastya installs the last few pieces, and Brian watches with mild horror as his skin fuses to the metal plates. “Fuck,” Nastya hisses.

It’s out of their power now.

Tim doesn’t properly wake up for a couple of days, and when he does, he and Jonny get into a screaming row that can be heard from every remote corner of the Aurora. After that, no one sees him for a week. By the time Tim emerges from the gun deck where he’s made his temporary home, Brian is starting to wonder if he imagined the feeling of Tim’s void-swept curls tangling around his fingers.

He’s not ready to think about what that means.

**Author's Note:**

> IT.  
> IS.  
> DONE.  
> I am REALLY sleepy since I was up so late last night finishing yesterday's fic, but I have a lot of thoughts about writing something every day for a whole month, so I am going to blabber!
> 
> First of all, if you've been following me through this whole Journey and cursing me out in the comments and reading and vibing with me, holy shit. Thank you so much. This fandom is full of such sweet and supportive people and you have all really made my life so much better, given the current, y'know, circumstances of the world.
> 
> Second: I think this... experiment has been really good for me in some ways and less great in others? Not sleep schedule-friendly, for sure. Got some stern looks from my therapist. But I'm absolutely AMAZED that I was able to juice so much creativity out of my poor little sponge brain (and for those of you in various discord servers who were there for me when i was like Bleh I Don't Wanna I Have No Ideas, YOU Aare the real MVPs). Having to write a Certain Thing on a Certain Day has also been really helpful for getting me to actually Start Writing The Thing instead of just agonizing over how to make it perfect tbh. When the month began, I ABSOLUTELY thought there was no way I'd actually finish it out. So I'm seriously impressed with myself, and also ready to SLEEP and write something LONG and write HAPPY things and, like, NOT be in my own personal hell of trying to think of titles every single day.
> 
> This is becoming a very self-indulgent endnote, but why else are you all here, right?? Y'all know what to expect by now. I got up to cut myself a celebratory brownie and I forgot what else I was gonna say. oh H thanks to the BF and to my good dear friend Sarah for providing me with So So Much moral support. anyway, I am sleepy and need to put googly eyes on my snake so he can cosplay, so if you enjoyed this (if it makes any sense) leave a comment? loved waking up to all of you yelling at me this morning, it's truly the best feeling <3 makes me do a nice lil evil cackle.
> 
> take care of yourselves! happy halloween! remember to set your clocks back if you're in a fucking arcane dipshit country that randomly switches time zones mid-year!


End file.
